The Blue Rockit Revue consists of Robben Ford, The Ford Blues Band with Patrick Ford, harmonica player Mark Ford, guitarist extraordinaire Chris Cain, harpist Andy Just and a handful of other great Bay Area players.

Robben Ford; The Ford Blues Band consisting of Patrick Ford, Andy Just & Dewayne Pate; Chris Cain, Michael Osburn, Garth Weber, Gabriel Ford and Mark Ford.

With guitar greats like Robben, Cain, Weber and Osburn you just can't go wrong. Throw in harp talent like Just and Mark Ford and you've got a party for sure.

I'm all fidgety with anticipation already. And this is the first big show of the month. Still have WC Clark, Sue Foley, Big Bill Morganfield and Bob Margolin still coming through in the next couple of weeks.

Robben Ford played next with his brothers for a nice set, but as is usually the case with Robben the songs tend to go on a little too long. Not taking anything away from him, though; the output was still top-rate. The show closed with everybody on stage at once. Great show, make certain to catch it if it comes your way.

Had a bit too much fun last night, so I decided to skip the Geoff Mulduar show tonight. Monday is Mitch Woods and I'll be splitting Wednesday up for Lloyd Jones and WC Clark, then Friday with Big Bill Morganfield and Bob Margolin. What a week ahead!!

BTW Slim, I really enjoy your writing style, you obviously have a gift!

One national performer even said to me that he felt Portland was a lot like Chicago of the 1950s. Myself, I think this is probably a stretch of the truth.

It depends on the event on how the age breakdown will occur. I'm sure this is the same everywhere, though. A show like the North Mississippi All-Stars or RL Burnside for example will fill the venue with younger patrons. Last year one day at the festival featured Jonny Lang and Shannon Curfman. The place was wall-to-wall with the 18-25 sect. But a show featuring blues masters like Eddy Clearwater or Anson Funderburgh will draw an older group, mostly from their mid-30s on up.

For all the bands playing through Portland, there is still an amount of oversight from many others. You rarely see an article in the major publications (Living Blues, Blues Revue or Blues Access) featuring our local performers. And if you do, it is usually on Paul deLay or Curtis Salgado. You'll also seldom hear Portland mentioned as a large blues community, too. Something I once addressed to Howard Stovall of the Blues Foundation along with a writer from Blues Access. I really haven't seen or heard much else about us, though.

Portland has a thriving group of blues artists all worth checking out. Also the first-rate blues label Burnside Records is located here. You know of Paul deLay, Curtis Salgado, Kelly Joe Phelps and Robert Cray spent a good part of his early career here. Now check out people like Duffy Bishop, Ellen Whyte, Bill Rhoades & Alan Hager, Terry Robb (he's done a lot of work with John Fahey), Robbie Laws, Linda Hornbuckle, Sheila Wilcoxson, Aaron Black, Jim Mesi (remember the guitar line from Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man"? Here's the guy who did it.), Jimi Bott, Jim Wallace, LynnAn Hyde & Stu Kinzel. This list can go on and on.

Better yet, check out the Cascade Blues Association's web-site at cascadeblues.org.

And eBuddha, thanks for the compliment about my writing. If you'd like to see more check out the Blues in History page at the CBA site with the articles under my real name (Greg Johnson). I'm most particularly proud of the one I did on Big Walter Horton. The ones added this month were done in our paper as an obituary notice, but the web-master split them up into the history column on the web-site, so they have the same intro on each. Let me know what ya think.

Slim

If that wasn't enough, the wonderful vastly-overlooked vocalist Duffy Bishop stepped up and sang two numbers with him. Including her trademark reading of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom." Nobody can put more passion or fire into this timeless classic than Duffy. She is a performer that must be seen; her recordings, though well-produced, just do not give off the energy that she puts out. A must-see act when given the opportunity.

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